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Sunday, 14 September 2014

This week I
started a new job - the first time I’ve worked full-time for about ten
years. So yeah, culture shock. The main way I have prepared for this
life-changing event has been through developing a colour-coded childcare
spreadsheet which impresses even my most anally-retentive leanings. Possibly The Childcare System frightens me
more each time I look at it and, what with more INSET days than I thought it
was possible to cram into a term, it seems likely that it will test the goodwill of our families to the limit.
But week one and there have been no sickness bugs. [punches air]
Although two weeks into term and everyone is doing a nice job of
developing hacking coughs.

So, going
back to work then. Obviously ten years
on and my old working wardrobe has seen better days, so I have eked out this
week trying to smart-casualise my interview suit (it’s a thing), while doing
some participation observation of what everyone else is wearing (more
funky, yet smarter, gear than me). The
night before my first day I was, predictably, a nervous wreck, a situation which I countered with some hardcore school uniform labelling - a job during
which it is impossible not to get obsessed with how variable the quality of
labels are these days. And of course asking myself, yet again, why I never invested in a permanent marker. The journey to work, planned out to within an
inch of its life, turned into a farce.
A journey that should take 40 minutes took 2 hours. So professionalism. I now realise that my first day travel arrangements
fall into the category of doomed. My
first ever day at the job I did before children was victim to a freak
storm with all trains from the South into London cancelled. You couldn’t make
this stuff up. I spent most of the day inexplicably stuck in Fareham, which is neither near my house, not - obviously - London. Perhaps I should
endeavour never to change jobs again.

But when I
finally arrived at work, considerably more flustered than I’d hoped, my boss
was nothing but lovely about it. And when she showed
me my office (my OWN office!! Headspace, luxury of the highest order), with loads of light and
yellow roses, she fast became the best boss ever. Did I mention the sign on my door?? For the first time in years, I felt like a
grown-up, not just someone who is failing at the social minefield of the playground, and sending the kids to about 30 less activities than they deserve. Of course, at first I barely
understood a word of what was going on, so badly was I drowning in information,
but by day 4 I felt like I was surfacing from the black hole of moving to a new computer, and actually starting to produce work that wasn’t
completely leftfield. There has actually
been time to plan and finish tasks! This bit has been a revelation - part-time, I was constantly in guilt mode that I wasn’t
pulling my weight compared to colleagues who were in every day, and desperately working into the early hours trying to compensate. It has in
fact been that rare and treasured thing of a good first week, helped no end by
my colleagues, who, without exception, have all been interesting, welcoming, and had a healthy dose of self-depreciation. And going out
to lunch, every day! What, really, is not to
like in this situation??

All of which
made me feel slightly guilty about how happy I felt coming home on Friday, as
it’s obviously been a big change for everyone.
Every minute of the week is now structured. I get up earlier and cack-handedly blitz the
domestic stuff I would usually have done after the school run, drop everyone
off at the bus-stop and school, before driving into work (an unanticipated bonus has been the extra dose of Radio 4 I get in my day). And then we have The System to rule the after-school
period, after which Charlie picks them all up and deals with baths, sandwich
boxes and supper. It’s this end of the
day that I appreciate I’ve had the good deal on so far. No more the after-school
gumpiness – when I get home my children are all fed, and full of hugs and a zillion things to tell me. Long may it last, for this bit is amazing. And then
we launch into another hour or so of manic activity before bedtime. God, that Friday night beer was good this week!

I had
thought that this weekend would be all lie-ins and chilling. But it turns out that you just need to
squeeze in more of the stuff you’d normally do during the week. Dur! And
I have not even begun to think about what a hovel our house is looking like, or
how neglected my friends and family are.
One step at a time …

This week I am very lucky to the Newbie Showcase on PoCoLo, which the lovely Rachel at Umeandthekids is so ably hosting while Vicky's off enjoying the sun. So please do join in with all the wonderful bloggers over there this week:

Thursday, 4 September 2014

I’ve rather lost
my blogging mojo recently. Between
redundancy, taking on more consultancy than I can comfortably cope with, and the
relentless search for another job, it’s just been firefighting. Just as it was starting
to look a bit desperate I finally I got a job, which I’m starting in a few days now. Full-time, so - I know - scary. But also exciting, and doing what I’ve longed
to be doing for a while now. So the summer
holidays have been bittersweet, knowing that next year it will be very
different. And now big changes are afoot
– K starting school and H moving up to middle school. There’s been too much to blog to know how and
where to start. But last week something
happened that I’m getting stuck on, and I’m hoping that by blogging about it
I’ll find out what to do. I apologise in
advance for the rambling.

Last week
was Katie’s 4th birthday and we went to a local themepark, which
has a sub-themepark based around a popular children’s character (bear with me
on this, I’m trying to anonymise things). We have season tickets here that my mum has
bought us as Christmas presents for the last two years, and the children know
it inside out. The older two would
normally spend a trip completely focused on out scary-riding each other, but
today everyone was on-message that it was Katie’s treat and she was calling the
shots. So obviously the sub-themepark
it was.

Things were
going well: we’d got there relatively early and managed to dodge some of the
more horrendous queues. But
then K wanted to go on her favourite ride, which was already nurturing the wait from hell. For the sake of making
it visual, let’s call it The Giraffe ride.
What you do (after queuing) is ride around on a small giraffe set on a track, the giraffe rocking gently all the way. I
know. We got warm doughnuts and caffeine to take the edge
off the queue and amazingly managed to get through the next hour (no
exaggeration) without too much chaos breaking out. Or anyone dying of
boredom. Excitement was building as we
got to the front. Followed by the
dampest of damp squibs.

As the kids
lined up ready to claim their ‘giraffes’, the stallholder opened the gate
and said, “I’m not sure she can go on,” pointing at Charlotte, my eldest. Charlotte is 9, and tall for her age anyway. I must have looked confused - because I
certainly was. He pointed to her little
hand and mumbled something about it not being safe. Charlotte, incidentally, was born without a
left hand. This, however, is very far
down the list of distinguishable things about her. Obviously I am biased, but to me she is
beautiful, brave and astounding astute, the combination of all of Luna and
Hermione’s best qualities. Throw in a bit of Buffy too. Anyway. Taken aback and trying not to come across as
some kind of gibbering idiot, I told him there was no safety issue. Charlotte had been on it many, MANY times
before, as indeed she had on every ride in the themepark, and no one had ever
raised an eyebrow. The one time I had thought
another ride looked a little hairy I’d mentioned it to the stallholder who’d assured
me that it was no risk whatsoever. I was pretty calm in making these points, trying not to attract any more
attention than necessary to a situation which was clearly mortifying for
Charlotte. But the stallholder just
looked worried and said he’d have to check the safety rules. He did this, and came back saying that The Rules stated that you needed to hold on with two hands.

I explained
that Charlotte could do that perfectly fine – her little hand is very far from
redundant, she has a wrist with lots of mobility, which she’d naturally use to
grip onto the groove in the giraffe’s neck. Without giving it a second thought, just like
any other child would. Besides, the ride
is geared at MUCH younger children and height-based. Katie’s had to ride on it on her own since she
was three-and-a-half, and it is fair to say she is not totally reliable on the
holding on tight front. Indeed there is
a camera half way around the ride that takes pictures which they later try to
flog you, and which you’re encouraged to wave at. The point I’ll eventually get to is that is
that holding on with two hands is certainly not something that the ride is
attempting to enforce in any way, and if there was the slightest risk then I
suspect they would have installed seatbelts some time ago (as they do on many other rides). But the stallholder just looked more worried
and said he’d have to call for his manager.
Which he did, and for some inexplicable reason he was unable to get an
answer there and then, and we had to sit out an excruciating ten more minutes
for the (stepping up a gear now, to two) managers to arrive.

This is the
bit that made me the most cross/upset/frustrated. That my daughter was forced to stand there
patiently, while some idiotic problem was resolved, enduring the humiliation of
standing at the front of the queue while smaller children were waved past her. People overhearing the exchange and suddenly looking at her
differently. This the bit that I think
was particularly badly handled, and is no way to treat a child. On the positive side, I am eternally grateful
to the mother behind me who muttered as loudly as she was waved
through about how ‘f’ing ridiculous,’ the whole thing was. There are times when you just need someone to tell it how it is.

The managers
eventually arrived, the stallholder spoke to them and they asked me what the
issue seemed to be. I replied I didn’t
know. We’d been coming on season tickets
for two years, no issue had ever been raised before, which made it all the more
mystifying that it had come up on one of the park’s most gentle rides. Also - just plain rambling now - that the way they were dealing with this was completely inconsiderate of my daughter’s
feelings. Acting like she couldn't hear. Somewhat pathetically I was
nearly in tears at this point. Meanwhile
Charlotte looked stoic, or did a very good impression of it. She does want to be an actress, after
all. Thankfully the managers looked embarrassed,
and mumbled, “Yeah, yeah, that’s fine,” and waved us through.

But of
course it was very far from fine. I
doubt if there was a split second of that ride which didn’t stick in
Charlotte’s throat, and she was subdued for the rest of the day. No-one wants to be looked at as the one
that’s different. She is such a capable,
daredevil child, she takes on so much physically that I never could – she rode
a bike without stabilisers before she started school, is the most graceful swimmer
I’ve ever seen; she surfs, cartwheels and backflips. It was demeaning for her to have to go
through that nonsense, and to have no voice.

The more I
think about it, the more utterly convinced I am that there was no safety issue at stake and that the stallholder was just inexperienced and covering his back. I don’t even really blame him so much as the
managers who didn’t shut the issue down as soon as he phoned them. The waiting was the soul-destroying
bit. I lay awake for several nights
afterwards feeling too angry and disempowered to do anything.

Now
obviously I have some perspective, I know that in the scheme of things this is
a little problem, and Charlotte’s stoicism is some reflection of the amount of
times she copes with this kind of reaction in various forms. But that doesn’t make it ok, and here’s what
I need help on.

I want to write
a letter that will have an impact. I’m
pretty sure that will happen if I present the facts as I am doing now is that I’ll
get a standard health-and-safety line thrown back at me. And there will have been no point ever having written it. And I don't accept that line, it's a cop-out. The themepark is a place
which has built itself up as being disability-friendly (not that Charlotte sees
herself as disabled, but that’s the point - this man clearly did). If things stay the same and this happens to
someone else, who knows what the lasting effects of all these cumulative disrespects will be? Here’s what I think needs to happen

-The ‘rules’ that the stallholder consulted are
clearly badly worded, and need rewriting to reflect people’s differences and
their different strategies for personal safety.

-If staff don’t feel confident applying safety
rules and are doing so in a way that is misguided, then whatever disability awareness
training goes on is clearly not working, and needs to be changed.

Is this really so unreasonable? The thing is how
can I get this across, without sounding aggressive? Because I do feel really strongly about this and will go to the
press to campaign if necessary. But anger is
never helpful in getting people to see things from your point of view. How can I make something positive out of
this?

And thank-you - if you’ve got to the end of this,
you are amazing, and I really will hang off your every word of advice.

Thursday, 22 May 2014

I had one of
those moments yesterday, zoning out in Costas, that the endless faffing about
with coffee machines was not dissimilar to the mechanical putting together of a
breast pump. My husband used to liken
this to my assembling a machine gun. I
suspect that this was a stoic, if fruitless, attempt to make me feel that I struck a
glamorous and edgy figure in the kitchen.
As opposed to just being some task that I was destined to do approximately
8573 times, in preparation for the ritual throwing out of the OCD quantities of
frozen breast milk that had been stockpiled once several thick lines had been
drawn under breastfeeding.

Breastfeeding. Ah yes, how could I forget? That quagmire of failure, bastion of middle-class
competency.

It is fair
to say that I was not a natural at breastfeeding. I shall spare you the exceedingly long and
very dull story, but my eldest daughter ended up being mixed fed. Which I can tell you for free is the worst of
all worlds. My inverted nipples didn’t
exactly help matters in an already sorry state of affairs, so we ended up with
this ridiculous, self-patented scenario where – apart from the very occasional concession
to a nipple guard – I ended up pumping and feeding it to my daughter in a
bottle. In addition to formula feeding, as I was convinced my milk wouldn’t be enough. Basically a one-way ticket to
insanity. There is very little as
pointlessly time-consuming as pumping and then bottle-feeding it straight back to
your child, but that was the way I rumbled.
For 13 sodding months. And then I wisely stopped, had a good drink,
and promptly fell pregnant again.

You’d think that there would have been some lessons learnt here, wouldn’t you? But no, with my following two children – who
miraculously breastfed ok - I continued with the nonsense of pumping. Nominally in case of some emergency scenario
like alien abduction or a burst appendix.
I say they fed ok, obviously I mean ok in the sense of the obligatory 3
months of toe curling and health visitors sending you well-meaning (but
essentially useless) articles on wet-wound healing. It’s magical stuff.

Clearly this
doublespeak feeding strategy was the cause of some frequent discussion in our house
about the logic of keeping a freezer stacked with milk that was on a constant
going-out-of-date watch. But I probably
wouldn’t have liked to push this point too strongly with me at the time either. A sane person would have also invested
in an electric breast-pump, in some sort of a nod towards efficiency, but I was
much too far some down the road of crazy by now. Instead I worked my way through about 10
models on eBay, learning along the way that I couldn’t get a drop out with some
makes no matter how hard I tried. I also
learnt that if you want to stimulate the letdown reflex then don’t bother
reading anything that might even vaguely stimulate your brain. I became exceedingly skilled at zoning out, and imagine I was pretty amazing company of an evening.

In
retrospect I think the feeling of total failure with my first was not exactly
helped by the fact that I went on a post-birth NHS course where we learnt a
series of outstandingly helpful techniques like how to brush teeth, and when to start thinking
about weaning. I am not even slightly exaggerating when I tell you that one session was pretty much dominated by discussing the versatility of an Annabel Karmel guacamole dip for dinner parties. The dip, incidentally, was very good; I wasn't so big on dinner parties at the time so can't comment on that eventuality. All stuff that I presumably
could have read in a book, but in my state of new-parent panic felt that a good
old course would settle one and for all.
After all, this theory had worked in most other aspects of my life up
until now, and it also kind of distracted me from some of the scary health
stuff that was rumbling on with my daughter at the time. I was normal, see! Anyway, the other parents on this course were
totally rocking the breastfeeding thing, and the following few months were
punctuated with this weekly drain on morale.
I’d gleaned that I probably wasn’t in the same social group as
them from the off when they all talked about their husbands’ practices and Very Important business trips, but when a post-course knees-up was organised at one of their
houses, my suspicions were confirmed. My
car recognition is poor at the best of times, but even I could see that there
wasn’t a car in that cattle-gridded drive worth under £30k. So I turned around, and drove home in my 10-year
old Micra, punching air that being - nominally - a grown up I was free to go, and that the ritual humiliation was at an end.

The
breastfeeding was actually rather lovely with the second two after the first
horrific weeks. But the pumping sucked big time.

Wednesday, 14 May 2014

Over the bank holiday weekend, when
Charlie was off running his favourite marathon (Avebury to Stonehenge, in case
you’re interested), we took ourselves off fairy hunting. Furzey Gardens is this hidden gem in
Minstead in the New Forest. It's fairly unique in not being the traditional stately home and
gardens set-up, but a charitable trust in which the wonderful gardens are tended
by volunteers and young people with learning difficulties. It was one of the first places we were brave
enough to embark on day trip to when Charlotte was a baby (I know, we are
pretty hardcore, venturing all the way to the next village: we should probably write a book about this
kind of stuff!). And it’s one of those
places that keeps us coming back because every time there’s some new structure
or discovery to be made. And of course
there are the fairies ...

Same child, same wall of pink ... eight years on

When we first started coming the
fairies had just moved in. Now they seem
to be pretty well established, with over 30 fairy doors waiting to be
found. The great thing about these is
they’re not set on a trail, and while there’s a vague kind of map it’s more a
nudge in the right direction. So you
never discover them all, and finding a new one is genuinely magical. Some of them are probably totally secret. This time we found Midas’ Mansion for the first
time, off the beaten track: a door at which fittingly a pile of coins had been
left to be turned into riches. It would
be rude not to join in. We found about
10 doors today, and the expression on Katie’s face – who thinks Ben and Holly
totally rule, and who is gutted that there is no sign of the tooth fairy visiting
her yet – was priceless. Throughout the
gardens little offerings of flowers have been at the fairies’ doors, and it
struck me, particularly after Long Barrow a few weeks ago and the sudden death
of someone in our village whose doorstep has since been decorated with pots and
wildflowers, how compelling our need is to reach out to fairies and the dead
with colour.

We’ve been to Furzey loads, but the
spring is truly spectacular, I haven’t seen pinks and reds like it anywhere
else on earth (I haven’t retouched any of these pictures). There’s an adventure playground, inventively made
up of a series of African treehouses, tunnels and a dry boat. There’s a great three-floored treehouse with
views over the Isle of Wight, a bug barn, eccentric scarecrows, alpacas
studiously ignoring the interlopers, a giant’s picnic table, a hidden star-gazing
hut, and 16th century cottage complete with a family of sleeping
children guarded by a spider (you really have to see it to get it). It’s a place for stories to unfold, and you
don’t need to say very much at all because the children are immediately drawn
in. For the adults there’s a rather good coffee
shop, art gallery and plant sale (I say for adults, like I would have the slightest
clue how one negotiates a plant sale). But really, with the massive lawn
looking down over the spectacular mass of colour, picnics win every time.

It’s true at one point Katie had a
total meltdown after cruelly being taken away from the swings. (Am I the only
person in the world who totally hates swings?
You spend your whole time either queuing or riddled with guilt that your
turn might go a millisecond over the agreed norm.) We made some cursory attempts at distraction,
making grass guns, fountains and horns, which she treated with the disdain they
deserved. But such is life, and as my
older children point out, it makes it somehow it more memorable remembering the
various places where strops have been had.
It was only really when we discovered the next fairy door that some semblance
of order was restored. And such is
Furzey Gardens that there are so many compelling new spaces to be discovered; it’s hard
to maintain a funk for very long.

Saturday, 3 May 2014

I’m not quite sure how the world got
so polarised that oil pulling has already become more or less passé within the online community. Yet whenever I mention it in real-life I get
a ‘Huh??’ Followed, when I explain it, by
a look that rapidly turns into mild suspicion, and finally backing away. Indeed my dentist all but fell about laughing
when I mentioned it, so bang go my hopes of being taken seriously as a human being
there again.

Monday, 28 April 2014

On Easter Monday we returned to
Avebury stone circles, which we’d discovered just after Christmas. But it takes a while for us to drive there,
and it felt like we’d only just skimmed its surface before.

Wednesday, 23 April 2014

Something has
always got in the way of blogging recently, with the result that now I sit down
and try and catch up my head is a mess of disparate thoughts, and no hint
of a theme to string them all together around. Holidays are always a bit like this, pushing the door shut against the
throbbing to-do list. Pretending to be
totally relaxed about this kind of stuff.

Sunday, 20 April 2014

Today being
Easter, the social media backdrop has ramped up a gear, reminding me how ‘other
people’ do this kind of stuff. Providing
a handy rulebook to substitute for the one I lack for all manner of social
situations.

Tuesday, 11 March 2014

I just noticed that I’ve missed my
blog’s birthday. Sorry about that, blog. Having said that I’m
not exactly up on the etiquette of a blog’s birthday, pretty much as I wasn’t
up on the occasion that a baby’s first birthday calls for. I think
there is probably a life manual that I missed somewhere along the line.

Saturday, 8 March 2014

Today is International Women’s Day,
and for the past month or so parent bloggers have been taking part in TeamHonk, a massive relay across Britain to raise money and awareness for Comic
Relief. It has currently raised over
£22,000 and is now around the Manchester area on its way up to John O’Groats.

This week, without fanfare and with
their typical good humour, the architects of Team Honk – Annie, Penny and Tayna
– set off to Tanzania to see how the money raised by Team Honk last year hasbeen invested by The Gatsby Trust to support female entrepreneurs in order to
make a #lastingchange to theirs and their families’ lives. Lack of education, hostile labour markets and
gendered violence have seen women suffer disproportionately high levels of
poverty, something with Comic Relief and the Gatsby Trust are fighting to
readdress by working to create sustainable improvements in community life.

Team Honk have been sending back
digital postcards of the inspiring women they’ve met, and I’m privileged to
have Forestiana on my blog today, a wine processor, who sounds like a woman
after my own heart.

Team Honk have been
stoically sampling her hibiscus wine, which people are literally knocking on
Forestiana’s door to buy! You can read
more about her on Mammasarus’s (Annie’s) blog.
If you get a chance,please do have a look at some more of the inspirational
women that Team Honk have been meeting, and you will get a glimpse of the ways
that women have been investing their enthusiasm and grit into gradually making the
world a better place. Seriously, I
struggle to think of things I would miss more than clothes, soap and wine, just
some of the wonderful products that the women featured today have been making
for their communities to give their families a better future.

If you would like to get involved
further in Team Honk’s fundraising, you can donate here and help support these
life-changing projects.

You can also retweet these digital
postcards, and wherever you see the hashtag #lastingchange.

Thanks for reading and, whatever you
do, have a wonderful International Women’s Day.